How to Sharpen a Detail/Spindle Gouge

hi today we to talk about sharpening the spindle gouge the spindle gouge is one of the more difficult tools to sharpen and I'll show you why I totally go roughing gouge is simple to sharpen because it involves a simple rolling motion side to side once again notice the simple rolling motion side to side tools like spindle gouges as well as Bowl gouges are much more difficult to sharpen they have a compound bevel meaning there's more involved than just the roll let me show you a close look at the bevel of a spindle gouge reveals the complex nature of its bevel you'll notice that there is some rounding here but there's also a sweeping motion going back the rounding motion is dominant but there is a slight sweep going to the back of the tool a close look at a bowl gouge also reveals a compound shape although there is minor rounding in the front there is a large area of sweeping towards the back so we not only need a method to be able to sharpen this compound shape but we have to be able to replicate the process each time the best method I've found to do this is to use the Wolverine Jake system with the very grind attachment depending how you set up the very grind jig it can give us a rolling motion with a slight swept back as with this spindle gouge all the way to a large sweeping motion with the minimum amount of roll as with this bowl gouge let's take a look at how we would set up our Barragan jig in order to sharpen a spindle gouge we control the amount of roll and sweep by loosening this wing nut and moving to position of the leg I found that putting the leg in the top position would give us best results for the spindle it gives us more role but a slight sweep side-to-side we must be able to mount our tool into the jig in a repeatable fashion the manufacturer recommends making this mounting jig it's drilled out with a Forstner bit and it's 1 and 3/4 inch deep we loosen the brass thumb wheel on the very grind check we insert the tool and we tighten it very slightly now we go over to the jig done just showed you we place our very grind jig on top of the wooden block and we loosen the brass wheel and we allow the tool to bottom out at the bottom of the wooden jig then we tighten the brass wheel now we're able to set our tool at a repeatable distance of 1 and 3/4 inches extension from the jig we take a magic marker and we draw a solid line on our bevel we now place a very grind jig into its base and we proceed to try to line up the bevel of the tool by moving the base of the jig in or out we I and up till we have our bevel closed then we take our hand and gently turn our driving wheel now examine the line we made with the magic marker you'll notice that the grinding wheel removed the marker at the top of the bevel but not the bottom which means we now have to adjust the base of our jig in this case move it closer to the wheel a recolor or align with the magic marker we put our jig back into the base we loosen the base and we move it slightly closer to the wheel I once again place the jig back into the base put our tool against the wheel and gently turn the wheel by hand again you'll notice this time the marker was completely removed from the bevel this indicates we have our tool set at the proper angle at this point I want to talk about the shape of the tip of the tool you notice the curve I have this spindle gouge ground - it's called a fingernail grind it's shaped like the end of a fingernail note jig is going to replicate that shape this is going to be determined by how much time the tip of the tool spends on the grinding wheel versus the sides if the tip of the tool spends too much time on the grinding wheel it would flatten that fingernail shape if the tip doesn't spend enough time on the wheel they would generate a pointed tip so what we want to do is avoid sharpening like this you don't want to start at the tip go to one side go back to the tip go to the other side and go back to the tip what you're doing is you're hitting the tip twice for every time you hit one side this would cause it to flatten the fingernail grind in the front here's the procedure I used for sharpening my spindle gouge I touch one side of the tool to the wheel I rotate the tool and right before I reach the tip I lift the tool off of the wheel I rotate the tool over I touch the other side of the tool to the wheel and once again I rotate towards the tip before I reach the tip I again lift the tool off of the wheel now I position my tool so that the flute is facing up I touched the tip gently to the wheel and I can roll the tool back and forth and then control the shape of the tip of the tool now remember whenever we sharpen a toll we touch it lightly to the wheel we never push down and here's what the sharpening looks like we turn on our grinding wheel let the wheel come up to speed we touch one side to the wheel roll it to the front lift the tool rotate the tool over do the other side roll to the front once again lift the tool and now we shape the front and here we have a sharpen tool we've maintained the angle of our bevel as well as kept our fingernail grind in the front and that's how we sharpen a spindle gouge I hope this video helped you out good luck with sharpening your spindle gouge and thanks for watching

Channel: Dave's Woodshop

Views: 107,920

Keywords: How to sharpen a spindle gouge, Spindle gouge, lathe, lathe tools, sharpen lathe tools, woodturning, woodworking, how to, Sharpening, Sharpening a spindle gouge, Wolverine jig, Vari-Grind, detail gouge

Id: pq6QMLC-x7s

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2016